Book Reviewed: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Metaphorical expressions of the American Dream This book is an emblematic of 1920s America, a classic of American literature. It is often studied in schools and colleges for its exploration of the American Dream, symbolism, and the disillusionment. This fiction was inspired by a youthful romance of Fitzgerald with socialite Ginevra King, and the fun he had on New York’s Long Island in 1922. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest who moves to Long Island, and becomes a neighbor with a wealthy man named Jay Gatsby. Much of the story is about the wild parties and the wealthy lifestyles in New York. It chronicles the lifestyle of the rich, the dreams of the nouveau riche and the ambitions of the working class through the eyes of Nick Carraway. His life and social relationships with other characters such as Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Tom Buchanan are featured in this book. Author Fitzgerald examines money in the light of the economic boom in America. Money is divided into two types: new money and old money. New money is the fortune that self-made millionaires like Gatsby have, and the old money encompasses the inherited wealth of Daisy and Tom Buchanan. Author Scott Fitzerald fronts the main characters but discusses how American dream was an illusion for many in the country. This story is about America itself, and not Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway or the Buchanans. This work has provided an enduring platform in high schools and colleges where the imaginations run wild, and there is an abundance of ideas and interpretations. The Original 1925 Edition has about 110 pages, but this edition has 218 pages including some cool illustrations. Gatsby had four film adaptations, with two big-budget and well-known movies: the 1974 version starring Robert Redford, and the 2013 film with Leonardo DiCaprio. The film adaptations have influenced readers’ understanding of the novel, but there is not one best Great Gatsby movie that fully captures the spirit of the book. If we compare this with Lee Harper’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which has just one film adaptation that critics consider worthy of the book, and one of the best movies of all time. One of the weaknesses of this book is it fails to go deep into the jazz age and the life in New York. At this time when the city had new immigrants from Italy, and few decades earlier, Irish immigrants, and of course African Americans who were living in Harlem and parts of Brooklyn. Jewish immigrants from Europe were also in living in Manhattan. It was a melting pot of race, culture and values that ran wild. The city had numerous law and order problems, raising Sicilian mafia, gangs operating in Irish and Jewish neighborhoods, and African Americans caught in the middle. Life was tough, but they coexisted and led to creativity. The Harlem renaissance and inventions of Jazz contributed by African Americans, and tap dance to go with jazz was a contribution by Irish and African Americans. Scott Fitzgerald perhaps pities himself that he did not have the life of Jay Gatsby, or he could not overcome the racial and antisemitic prejudices he had while living in New York. Despite all the positives, and some negatives of this book, this work is not free of the “writing tricks” of a sagacious author participating in an essay competition to win the top prize.

Book Reviewed: The Catch of a Lifetime: Moments of Flyfishing by Peter Kaminsky

The passion for flyfishing Fly fishers have a deep connection with nature that allows them to relax more in natural surroundings away from civilization to make fly fishing not only a great a sport but an intimate meditative activity. In this edited book, there are twelve chapters that include fly fishing of trout, Atlantic salmon, steelhead, Pacific salmon, blue marlin, blue fin, bone fish, pike, and others. This is a collection of about seventy-six essays, twelve by women, and three by the editor Peter Kaminsky. This is remarkable because there was a time when fishing was dominantly a man’s sport, but it is brightening find so many women getting involved, and they enjoy the sport as much as the men do. Many of the personal stories narrated by the authors are brilliant expressions of themselves enjoying the fishing life to the fullest. These encounters bring to life recollections, as Paige Wallace describes the sight of a rising trout to the primal shiver of romantic attraction on the dance floor. Hilary Hutcheson describes a trout rising above the surface as a little more than the gentlest kiss with the spinner, but the fisher’s presentation must land as delicately as a falling leaf. Then there is the heart–warming story of a father – daughter’s month-long transcontinental fly-rodding adventure that ends at the Blackfoot river in Missoula, Montana. George Semler and his daughter Hannah Semler describes the natural setting of the river which fascinated years earlier by Norman Maclean in his book “A river runs through it.” Semler recalls that he was bewitched and enchanted by the river. In many ways streams, creeks, brooks, lagoons, and rivers are like living creatures. They exist, grow, and move. They have their mood swings, being angry and being peaceful. A fly fisher who spends time in such an environment comes to an understanding that these waterways have a soul, and one must respect them. You will get a sense of that in the story of Norman Maclane’s fishing in the Montana landscape that engages a reader with profound metaphysical questions. These moments are a physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as in the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ernest Hemingway. One of the things that is missing in this book are the photographs that summarize the excitement and joy of the fisher, the moment he/she caught. Many authors recall some of their biggest catches on water, but the reader would like to connect with that moment and imagine how that instant flew for the author. Most essays run from one page to three or four pages.

Book Reviewed: The Central Theme of the Srimad Bhagavatam by Swami Ranganathananda

The practice of Bhakti yoga This is a small book of fifty-six pages that summarizes the principal teachings of Bhagavata Purana (Shrimad Bhagavatam) by Swami Ranganathananda, a well-known follower of the Sri Ramakrishna Math order. Swamiji brings his spiritual knowledge of Dvaita Vedanta to illustrate the path of Bhakti, the aesthetic delight of Prema or Pure Ecstatic Love for the personal God. This practice, strengthened by jn̄an̄a (knowledge of self) and vairagya (renunciation) leads to breaking free from karma (individual self’s suffering and bondage) that ends to the cycle of birth and death. Shrimad Bhagavatam is a crowning moment for the Dvaita Vedanta philosophy that distinguishes the divine from the individual self. According to this philosophy, the divine is a personal God, distinct from the individual self is in control of this universe. The individual self, on the other hand, is a finite limited entity that is subjected to the laws of the universe. Karma that results from life’s bondage to these laws is viewed as the cause of the individual’s self’s suffering. The only way to break free from karma is to surrender to the personal God. The concept of Maya of Advaita Vedanta is regarded as the cause of the individual self’s ignorance and bondage in Dvaita school of thought. Surrendering to the personal God Lord Krishna brings forth the eternal bliss. The text of Srimad Bhagavatam consists of twelve books (skandhas or cantos) with 335 chapters and 18,000 verses. The tenth book, with about 4,000 verses, the most popular is discussed by the author. The 31st chapter of this mandala is the Gopika Gita singing the praises of Lord Krishna. It illustrates the true love for the personal God; a believer of Bhakti yoga sees Lord Krishna through the eyes and heart of a Gopi. It is a journey to experience the Oneness with the Lord that strengthens the seeker’s relationship with the Divine. The author discusses one important verse from each of the twelve skandhas. A prior knowledge of Bhagavadgita and Srimad Bhagavatam is helpful to appreciate the teachings of Swamiji.

Book Reviewed: The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves by Kip Thorne

Spacetime storms This is a sort of children's picture story for adults. Author Kip Thorne's verse encourages readers to read and understand impressionistically than they might if he explained in densely formatted prose with math formulas. It is a neat way for someone to describe the gravitational force, the bending of spacetime around matter, work without physics and math. But in this book he illustrates the physics of gravity with verse and paintings. The goal being not the high level of accuracy but to convey the essence of the science to connect with the reality of the cosmos we live in. This book is a representation of artwork featuring more than one hundred paintings. The painting (illustrations) of gravitational effects does not fully take over but helps in some instances to mentally visualize the effects of spacetime bending. Co-author Halloran’s wife, Felicia Halloran is a frequent character in the book that includes her ghostly figure stretched and squeezed through a spinning black hole. The gravitational waves stretch and squeeze spacetime in orthogonal directions as they travel but it also twists space-time. As Felicia falls into a black hole, her feet spin in one direction while her head rotates in the other. In the paintings this motion is represented by spirals which are referred to as vortenses. Some of the illustrations are unappealing. I question the appropriateness of including Felicia Halloran in this work when her contribution to this book is minimal. The Playboy magazine turned down this painting years ago when the authors were considered for a publication in their journal, but fell through because the sex appeal of her image did not meet the bar of the magazine. The stretching and squeezing of spacetime is measured by the gravitational waves reaching the planet Earth from colliding black holes or neutron stars. The measurable difference is small, four one-thousandths of the diameter of a proton, but this is measured by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) at Hanford, Washington State, and Livingston, Louisiana. This is not the first time Kip Thorne has attempted to do an artistic approach to describing the black hole and its gravitational force, the 2014 film “Interstellar” starring Matthew McConaughey focuses on the black hole where NASA pilot Nolan (McConaughey) careens into the black hole (Gargantua). The movie and the book by Kip Thorne about this movie had numerous inaccuracies, for example, the depiction of the black hole is not accurate according to recent discoveries by the James Webb Telescope. In one painting the author shows how a human being is spaghettified right away if the black hole is young. What if the black hole is large and old, wouldn’t that get her spaghettified right away? If not, why not? In the last chapter, one of the paintings depicts the black hole as strings with the title, Quantum gravity, the physics holy gravity. This image is too fictious because quantum gravity may not exist at all. Attempts to reconcile classical gravity with quantum physics fail because the physical reality we observe is only partial and incomplete. The observable universe is only five percent, and the rest (95 percent) of it is made of dark matter (gravity) and dark energy (anti-gravitational energy). The laws of physics fail inside black holes where the light (photons) is completely controlled by the gravity, and the light speed is not constant. All physics formulas that have “c” the speed of light is inapplicable. The reality as we know outside the black holes will be quite different inside. The so called “spaghettification” is at best a guess work, certainly by string theory and quantum mechanics. The Kip Thorne’s part of this work, the physics in a poetic manner is interesting, but I did not think that the paintings would make this book any more interesting. The illustrations that show how gravitational waves are generated are helpful but most of the paintings are not helpful. In the Wi-Fi world there are numerous artistic sketches about the impact of gravitational force. Images of James Web Telescope, NASA images and illustrations, Space.com, and numerous blogs and web-based newspapers are always giving us the best illustrations of the gravitational waves and gravity.